This publication essentially consists of two parts. The first part is a second edition of Byzantine Coinage, originally published in 1982 as number 4 in the series Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection Publications. The second part of the publication reproduces, in an updated and slightly shorter form, a note contributed in 1993 to the International Numismatic Commission as one of a series of articles in the commission’s Compte-rendus sketching the histories of the great coin cabinets of the world. [PDF, Acrobat Reader required] Read >>

There were few phenomena in the history of Byzantium which mobilized more people, wealth, and artistic creativity than did pilgrimage. Within a few generations of the foundation of the Empire by Constantine the Great, the east Mediterranean had come alive with pious travelers. The story of the Early Byzantine pilgrim survives in travelogues and guide books, in historical texts and theological tracts, in scores of popular legends generated by miracleworking saints, and, most palpably, in hundreds of surviving pilgrim “souvenirs” and huge, abandoned shrines at the holy sites. [PDF, Arcobat Reader required] Read >>

The Moche Kingdom, which flourished on the north coast of Peru between 100 B.C. and A.D. 700, produced one of the most remarkable art styles of Pre-Columbian America. Although the Moche people had no writing system, they left a vivid artistic record of their activities and their environment. Their art illustrates their clothing, architecture, implements, supernatural beings, and a multitude of activities such as warfare, ceremony, and hunting. [PDF, Acorbat Reader required] Read >>

Rlured by the beauty of the materials, the fineness of the craftsmanship, and the fascination of the iconography of the first Pre-Columbian objects he saw. The Bliss Collection has been, since its beginning in 1912, primarily an esthetic one-probably the first esthetically oriented collection of Pre-Columbian artifactsso it seemed appropriate to organize a conference that would focus on a cross-cultural, art-historical approach. When we sought for a theme, the first that came to mind was that great unifying factor in Pre-Columbian cultures, the feline. Large cats such as the jaguar and puma preoccupied the artists and religious thinkers of the very earliest civilizations, the Olmec in Mesoamerica and Chavín in Peru. The feline continued to be an important theme throughout much of the New World until the European conquests. [PDF, Acrobat Reader required] Read >>

Olmec art held a special place in the heart of Robert Woods Bliss, who built the collection now housed at Dumbarton Oaks and who, with his wife, Mildred, conveyed the gardens, grounds, buildings, library, and collections to Harvard University. The first object he purchased, in 1912, was an Olmec statuette he commonly carried a carved jade in his pocket; and, during his final illness, it was an Olmec mask that he asked to be hung on the wall of his sick room. It is easy to understand Bliss’s predilection for Olmec art. With his strong preference for metals and polished stone, the Olmec jades were particularly appealing to him. Although the finest Olmec ceramics are masterpieces in their own right, he preferred to concentrate his collecting on jades. [PDF, Acrobat Reader required] Read >>